Video game helps stroke survivors recover

After collapsing from a massive stroke in church one Sunday morning, Nancy Bunch lay in the ICU unable to move her left side.

She spent weeks in recovery and was finally able to sit up. But she still couldn’t move her arm.

Then her occupational therapist coaxed her into playing a video game designed to help stroke victims.

“I said, ‘It sounds great, but I can’t move my arm,’ ” Bunch recalls. “But it was just amazing the strength it gave my arm. I did something that I knew my body could not do. It was hope.”

Before long, she was picking up a penny, grabbing a pencil, reaching for a can of soda. And more progress followed.

The game was produced by Recovr, a company launched by Larry Hodges, a professor in Clemson University’s School of Computing, and Austen Hayes, then a graduate computing student at the College of Engineering and Science.

The idea began in the summer of 2011 while the two were conducting research on human-centered applications, Hayes said.

Hodges had met Michelle Woodbury, an associate professor and director of the Upper Extremity Motor Function Lab at the Medical University of South Carolina, who had been pondering how to turn arm movement therapy into a game for stroke survivors.

As an occupational therapist, she had the clinical expertise but lacked the technical know-how. Hayes and Hodges remedied that.

“We created a prototype and she would test it at her clinic,” Hayes said. “Sometimes we’d bring ideas to the table and she’d say it would never work with a patient. We wanted to make sure we were building everything to address a need a patient or therapist has.”

Therapy game

The result was Duck Duck Punch, a game that lets patients rack up points by punching out virtual ducks like a carnival-style shooting gallery using a sophisticated motion tracking camera, a Microsoft Kinect, that monitors patients’ arm movements, he said.

“They sit or stand in front of the TV and interact with the game with their impaired arms thinking about getting to a high score and using movements their therapist wants them to complete,” Hayes said.

The goal as a stroke survivor is to practice a movement over and over again to regain mobility, he said. But patients may not get enough therapy in the hospital and at home, may not have the motivation to follow through.

“The research says that given enough therapy practice, patients have the potential to recover, but they never get enough practice,” he said. “Some people will never recover. This is not a magic bullet. But the majority of stroke survivors could improve more if they could practice more.”

Hayes said the pilot patients used the game an average of 49 minutes a day at home and that tests have shown up to a 15-percent improvement in mobility after a week.

Because it’s a game, it’s fun, not a chore, he said. Patients can whack at the waterfowl in a variety of settings, including Wild West Ducks, Seascape Ducks, and Ducks in Space.

While they have a choice of hue for their virtual arm, from skin tones to primary colors, most patients choose the green Hulk arm, he said. The game’s name is a play on Duck Duck Goose that the men found funny.

Hayes and Hodges formed Recovr in 2013. And using $750,000 from Concepts to Companies, founded by John Warner and Brian McSharry to turn ideas into businesses, they just completed their exclusive license for the company, Hayes said.

They also hope to hear from the FDA soon about clearance for the product as a medical device.

Each year, about 800,000 Americans have a stroke, which is a leading cause of disability, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And South Carolina is the middle of the Stroke Belt, a swath of the country that spans the Southeast.

‘It’s really fun’

Hayes, who is CEO of Recovr, said he always wanted to use his technical skills to develop something that would benefit society. And Hodges, the chief operating officer, runs another company that produces games which use virtual reality to help people with post traumatic stress disorder, fear of heights and other disorders, he said.

The two plan to develop other therapy games for conditions ranging from traumatic brain injury to Parkinson’s disease, he said.

Bunch, 63, says she didn’t know what happened that March 2, 2014 day in church. She just suddenly felt dizzy and “a thousand needles” going through the left side of her body.

But there was bleeding on her brain so serious that doctors had to bore a hole in her skull to relieve the pressure. And her husband, Kenneth, was told not to expect her to have any quality of life.

Once the Eutawville woman started playing Duck Duck Punch, though, she was hooked on the competition the game provided.

“The first time I tried to play ... I think I did over 150 punches with an arm that was totally nonfunctional. And when I went back again, I did over 300 punches,” she said. “I said they needed to be in every hospital. And I wanted one to take home.”

She did take the game home and after a week, Bunch says, the mother of two and grandmother of one was acing tasks she hadn’t been able to do just days earlier.

“It was just ducks, but all of a sudden, I was involved in this game and almost consumed. You just want to hit these ducks. It’s hysterical,” she said. “And it’s really fun.”

Though she’s not back to normal yet, Bunch says she’s come a long way. And along with her medical care, she credits Duck Duck Punch.

“I’ve never been a game player. And never in a million years did I expect a video game to help me so much,” she said. “I’m very blessed.”